David Butterfield

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739 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 20 May

David Butterfield’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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TRIGGERnometry · How Civilisations Die - Ancient Greece Expert David Butterfield · 20 May 2026 podcast

That then follows that the examination system, which literally is meant to grade by degree, that's why we use these terms, doesn't have a sufficient ground to stand on.

Which means the very act of going to a university to learn things which can then be tested and you can tell your future employer the degree to which you did well in that exercise, actually no longer is fit for purpose.

And this is the main reason that grade inflation has become rampant.

The main reason that it's almost impossible to get lower than a 2.1.

In the British system, of course, there's a first, then a 2.1.

But historically, there was a 2.2, a lower second, then a third, then a pass, and then a fail.

All of that category beneath 2.1 has almost entirely been eroded.

So long as you've done something, you really will get a 2.1.

Why is that happening so quickly?

Because there is a complete lack of faith in merit and excellence when it comes to examination.

So I looked around at what was happening within the subject, how every change to the syllabus, to admissions criteria, to examination methods was in the direction of travel away from identifying excellence and rewarding it.

even appointments at the academic level were starting to be made much less on the ground of academic excellence than either about the socio-political advantage of having such a person there, or even about the external optics of being able to have such a person.

And I could see that just as one of a few people who were really sticking our heads above the parapet and complaining,

the internal governance of the university was not going to change course in the near or indeed middle-term future.

And so I decided, as you say, although I could just bury my head in the sand, get in a corner of a library, enjoy my own academic work and be undisturbed until I'm 70, it wasn't a noble or an honest way to live.

I love the subject of the classics.

I love research and I love teaching.

And what I wanted to do was to go back to first principles, to search for what truth we can find in the world.

and to teach alongside and with academics and students who really have joy in their eyes about the intellectual journey and the curiosity that motivates it.

And so Ralston College, where I am now, is genuinely unique in the world.

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